ABSTRACT
I was Michael Weinstein’s undergraduate student from 1969 to 1972. He was without doubt the most influential teacher of my life. Looking back, I recall his classrooms as “untimely” in the Nietzschean sense of going against the dominant forces of the time and making a space for the unexpected to emerge. In his 1982 book, The Wilderness and the City, Michael defines philosophy in a way that also defines his teaching: “The essence of modern philosophy is the expression of an image of human existence and of its major possibilities that appeals to the free judgment of individuals.” 2 He expressed to us a variety of images of individual and collective life, and he expected us to bring our free judgment to the task of understanding and critique.
